Great outdoorsy weekend, highlighted by our discovery of a long new leg of Greenway connecting Warner Parks to Bellevue. How long's it been open, and why hadn't anyone told me!? Younger Daughter proposed that outing, her first voluntary recreational bikeride in recent memory but, she promises, not her last. What an easy escape, pedaling past baled fields and ball fields and rivers and woods, and an exorbitantly expensive private school, right up to the Horse Farm where she once had riding lessons. Simple pleasures are best, especially when seized spontaneously. Carpe diem isn't always grandly heroic, sometimes it's just a Saturday in the park.
Or the beer garden. I was so inspired, I went and joined the Tailgate mug club. They have a sundown beer garden site (they call it a "barn") well worth the price. Carpe cervisia.
And then yesterday, so mildly autumnal I never had to set foot in the house all afternoon. Did set foot in the pool, with slightly less enthusiasm than Saturday. Approaching each submersion now as potentially the last.
When I was a younger person myself, I was very little attuned to the elements and the seasons. How many beautiful Fall days of yore did I squander indoors, watching televised games I really could care less about, thinking I had all the time in the world before me? How many quality hammock hours did I miss? Too many. "As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." Doing my best to compensate now.
We turn to the Stoics in CoPhi today. Old Seneca had it right, our problem is not a paucity of time but a failure to make the most of the time we do have. "The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.” Life is short, but the days can still be long if we know how to use them.
5:30/6:36, 60/81
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